Charisma and charm never left ‘Tiger' Pataudi all through the seventy eventful years of his life. Being a royal, educated at Oxford and being a cricketer to boot are a lifelong passport to glamour in this cricket-crazy land that still prides itself on retaining a couple of trappings of the British Raj — the English language and Cricket. Added to all this was Mansur Ali Khan's marriage to Sharmila Tagore, the elegant Bollywood beauty and grand-niece of Rabindranath Tagore.

The week after Pataudi's passing away, one is left breathless reading the number of obituaries and tributes to Tiger, who died in Delhi on September 22. His versatility ensured that the tributes came from a variety of sources, including one from well-known novelist and former British member of parliament Jeffrey Archer, also a senior to Pataudi at Oxford.

Glamorous side

Striking a refreshingly different note was my friend V. Ramnarayan, team-mate of the Tiger in the Hyderabad cricket team during the mid-1970s. In a moving tribute to his senior colleague, he argued that Tiger was Nawab, not just of Pataudi but also of Hyderabad!

“I had the privilege of playing for Hyderabad when he was still a member of the team, with my first season being his last. I walked on air the whole season, thanks to the sheer joy of sharing the dressing room with the likes of Tiger, my captain M.L. Jaisimha, Abbas Ali Baig and Abid Ali. I wonder if there has ever been a more glamorous outfit in domestic cricket than the Hyderabad side of the 1970s,” wrote Ram in his Blog.

About Tiger in Hyderabad, another journo, Sumit Chakraberty, has this to say: “My earliest recollection of Tiger Pataudi is from the school cricket ground at HPS, Begumpet. This was a different era of cricket, marked by elegance and style. The matches were keenly contested, but it was more about how you played, and the camaraderie that went with a lazy afternoon of cricket. There was no stadium, only a few park benches under a large peepul tree. Pataudi would sit in his car and honk when a boundary was hit — there would be multiple honks for a perfect sweep shot played on one knee, a trademark of the Nawab himself.”

Love for hunting

Former Andhra skipper and Hyderabad all-rounder Bezwada Mahendra Kumar recalls an amusing incident in which the Tiger chased an intruding animal out of a cricket field. “I still recollect the scene when a buffalo entered the field and the Hyderabad fielders, including Pataudi, chased it out of the ground.”

Tiger also loved hunting, a pastime that landed him in litigation and trouble with wildlife enthusiasts. Recalling a match at Kothagudem, Kumar said that Pataudi arrived late for the match as he went hunting in the nearby forest. “Music was another passion of Pataudi and he used to hum a popular Ghantasala song on Lord Balaji during the Kothagudem match”. Some years ago, Pataudi was booked on charges of poaching wild animals. The case was being heard in an environment court in Faridabad. But there will be no Tiger present at the next hearing on the case, scheduled for December 12.

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